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Forum:Episode titles pt II
(Wish we had done this the first time around) - I've realized recently that, technically, the way we title episodes isn't in line with what's in the series. The title cards at the beginning use "7:00 a.m." - it's all uppercase, yes, but it's small caps; the "a.m." part is smaller than the T in "The" and thus is lowercase. Plus, we have the episode scripts, which I always thought used "A.M." until I realized that everything else on the title page is all-caps - so, at least in theory, it's the same situation there. Going by these and the dash formatting from that script, the episode titles should be in the format: *"Day 1: 12:00 a.m. – 1:00 a.m." *"Day 3: 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m." *"Day 9: 10:00 p.m. – 11:00 a.m." This btw is consistent with Wikipedia. It's a matter of personal preference (and trivial on the whole) but I think it looks a bit nicer than running the times together the way we currently do. Anyway, we've always made a point of prioritizing what's actually on screen above all else, and this is part of that. Changing all this would be easy to automate, just like the last time when we added the "Day X:" colons. --Pyramidhead (talk) 19:42, September 27, 2016 (UTC) :There comes a point where you have to balance practicality with exactly what is given by the script (e.g. prepending "Day 1:" to the first series episodes). I think doing this mass change falls on the wrong side of that balance; the new format would be a huge pain to get used to (typing in image episode categories without any autocomplete is hard enough as it is)--Acer4666 (talk) 20:05, September 27, 2016 (UTC) ::Actually, I'm somewhat in the agreement with Acer for sure. There's no way we can do the amount of mass changes of episode titles with that format. Plus, the format we got on here is fine and it wouldn't matter anyway. BattleshipMan (talk) 21:15, September 27, 2016 (UTC) :::It wouldn't be much work at all - we have the bot to move everything and update the titles everywhere. It may not matter much (as much as anything on a volunteer wiki matters) but I still feel it would be good to use the most "official" title available. I don't think it would be that hard to adjust, at least no harder than the last changeover - plus with Ep now so widely used it's pretty rare that you have to type out the full episode names anyway. Actually agree on image categories, though, that's been pretty awful regardless - going to work on a possible fix --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:00, September 27, 2016 (UTC) ::There are many times you need to link to an episode and pipe the link with something that the ep template doesn't cover. I remember starting here finding the episode names pretty difficult to get used to, and this change would make that process so much harder. ::Additionally: This isn't "what's actually on screen". Firstly, yes the font distinguishes "upper" and "lower" cases but if we're getting this pedantic, upper case A.M. and P.M. appear on screen. Secondly, what appears on screen doesn't have a dash - do we call them "1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m." or "between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m."? Thirdly, as you can see on the right, this episode is called "midnight and 1:00 a.m.". ::The scripts don't include the "Day X:" modifier and the title cards say something different to what you're proposing. We can't reproduce either of them blindly, so some change from them is needed; and the current system is simpler and easier to utilise for this wiki.--Acer4666 (talk) 23:11, September 27, 2016 (UTC) :::Pedantry is the name of the game around here my man! :) I get what you're saying - I'm not trying to argue that the title card itself is the title, I just feel like there should be some weight to the fact that the show consistently uses the X:00 a.m. format over others. In the same sense that we favor Wassim Khan rather than the alternate spelling used everywhere else. --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:35, September 27, 2016 (UTC) ::Oh I know pedantry is the name of the game - but I'm saying you either go whole hog or accept a practical compromise. The time is most commonly shown on 24 as 01:00:00, so really that should have the most weight in terms of formatting times. The "no dots" appears on the fox.com episode guides, so is how official titles are presented by Fox, so should carry a little weight too. The format you're describing probably fits in the middle. Weighing up the different weights with the practicality of use, I think the current system is the best. ::The Wassim Khan issue is one of canon - in-universe facts outweigh anything given out-of-universe. That's always been the case, but this discussion is about out-of-universe information.--Acer4666 (talk) 23:42, September 27, 2016 (UTC) :::Good points... really kinda bonkers that it got this way in the first place lol. I can't think of any other show where nobody can agree what each episode is even called! --Pyramidhead (talk) 23:48, September 27, 2016 (UTC) ::Haha, very true - but hopefully we're not as bad as the Star Trek Into Darkness title discussion!--Acer4666 (talk) 23:53, September 27, 2016 (UTC) : As the creator of the original episode pages, naturally I'm inclined to leave them the way they are. But there's been little consistency with how each episode title is presented, anyway. Scripts, websites, guide books, etc. all contradict each other. As Acer pointed out, Season 1 titles obviously didn't originally say "Day 1:" on them. For practical reasons, I think the current system works perfectly. Unless it's causing some problem somewhere, it would be more of a disruption to alter it after eleven years (tomorrow!). --proudhug (talk) 05:12, September 28, 2016 (UTC) ::I would have to agree that it's to leave the episode pages the way they are, regardless of how Pyramidhead sees it. BattleshipMan (talk) 06:28, September 28, 2016 (UTC) :::Charming as ever --Pyramidhead (talk) 18:29, September 28, 2016 (UTC)